The central business district (C.B.D.) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, "the Golden Triangle", has been for nearly sixty years with very little provision for housing. The area is topographically compact, approximately one half square mile, bounded by rivers on two of the sides and a bluff on the third side. It is the hub of the public transportation system, the convergence of the area watershed and the perceived focal point oft the region. In recent years the cultural center has also spread to the C.B.D., and there have been major rehabilitation, building and capital improvement projects. These conditions make for an environment enticing for both living and conducting business. Living Downtown: a Multiuse Complex for the Pittsburgh C.B.D. is a project that combines housing, offices, shops, parking, services and public and private open spaces. This is accomplished by considering factors such as zoning guidelines, demands for density, site conditions, egress, daylighting and sightlines. The design is inspired by Pittsburgh's vernacular hillside dwellings and the dynamics of the natural and built fabric of the site. Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken. - Eccelsiates 4:12 / Master of Architecture

Architecture frames life. By framing I mean that it gives individual awareness perimeters which shape the habits of the mind while the material frame supports the life of the body. We live in the center of our awareness. Some of Wallace Stevens’ poetry explores the habits and the shape of consciousness. Consider these lines: I measure myself / Against a tall tree / I find that I am much taller / For I reach right up to the sun / With my eye / And I reach to the shore of the sea / With my ear. (1) A building is a physical entity which gives us rooms and spaces. A dualism lies in thing and void because it necessarily constricts movement as well as shaping the consciousness as one moves to and fro and as one gazes into the distance. One’s desire to do these things may be frustrated by a poor building, while a well-formed building might encourage a choreography of consciousness, a mental dance. More than any other art, architecture presses upon daily life. It reminds us of the duality of mind and body. When we can enjoy the dual nature of architecture, we become more aware of our wonderful creatureness. A pleasant opposition forms between a sensed object-building and a sensing, willing, walking, inquiring creature. Tactility and other physical qualities which are sensed contribute to vital awareness. I define architecture as the art of building that serves vital feeling over time. Exterior conditions also frame life. Literal enclosure is not required. For example, a field may form a realm, that is, an ordered place under the sky. We know where we are in a realm. In a city, the parts belong together when most of them are ordered by common elements such as a street or a market square. In the United States, most familiar cities and towns are formed by the street. Often the buildings and the street make a canyon-like room for movement and activity. The life that flows through the street creates a city and nourishes it. Commerce, symbolic activities like parades and social activities like teen-age cruising maintain street life in even the smallest and most ordinary towns. The thesis project proposes a multiuse building to pull people into a downtown center. Pulaski, Virginia is the chosen town which I will describe in the next section. I begin the design with mass conceptually carved out to frame experience. The building I designed gives Pulaski a stronger downtown edge. This makes a boundary and a turning point to reinforce its identity as a place people feel proud to call home, and to renew the firm pattern of density to guide future builders and planners. This is necessary to forestall the common disintegration of the urban edge into a straggly commercial strip with disconcerting gaps and irregularity. Consider now the specific details of one small town. / Master of Architecture

Americans are going through a radical change in how they build cities. Urban areas across the nation are growing with multiple cores called "Edge Cities." These new centers do not look like our old city downtowns where buildings stood side by side, but rather their low broad outlines dot the landscape like cattle along a forged trail. These office towers, frequently guarded by trees and moats of asphalt peer at each other from respectful distances through reflected bands of glass. On the fringe of the modern city, these displaced spores sprout without relationship to any existing organization, other than the serpentine ribbon of looping, sprawling highways. The formation of spaces rather than the formation of objects is a strategy I explore in the "Eisenhower Metro Center" to combat today's urban sprawl. Architect Steven Holl suggests, "The expanded boundary of the contemporary city calls for the synthesis of new spatial compositions. An intensified urban realm could be a coherent mediator between the extremes of the metropolis and the agrarian plain." Within the scope of my thesis project I hope to define a new synthesis of urban life and urban form. Program, quality of light, and movement will become form generators of this new "Urban Edge". / Master of Architecture

[pt] Esse trabalho se dedica a uma análise de ordem projetual e construtiva do Pavilhão João Lyra Filho, edifício principal do Campus Francisco Negrão de Lima, sede da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). O campus, objeto de um concurso realizado pela Universidade em 1968, no qual os arquitetos Flávio Marinho Rêgo e Luiz Paulo Conde foram os vencedores, tem origem em um período de transição da arquitetura moderna brasileira e de expansão da estrutura voltada para o ensino superior no Brasil e no mundo. Nesse período, surgem no cenário internacional propostas inovadoras de campi que dialogam com a ideia de megaestrutura. Stefan Muthesius, autor do livro The postwar university: Utopianist campus and college, publicado no ano 2000, reconhece esses campi como single structure campus, em uma tradução livre campus de estrutura única. Essa classificação remete à campi em que o complexo programa universitário se concentra majoritariamente em um único edifício. Nesses casos, campus e edifício se confundem em uma única estrutura, impossibilitando dissociarmos um do outro. / [en] This work is dedicated to an analysis of the design and construction order of the João Lyra Filho Pavilion, the main building on the Francisco Negrão de Lima Campus, headquarters of the Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). The campus, the object of a competition held by the University in 1968, in which the architects Flávio Marinho Rêgo and Luiz Paulo Conde were the winners, has its origins in a period of transition of modern Brazilian architecture and expansion of the structure aimed at higher education in Brazil. During this period, innovative proposals for campuses that dialogue with the idea of megastructure emerged on the international scene. Stefan Muthesius, author of the book The postwar university: Utopianist campus and college, published in 2000, recognizes these campuses as single structure campus. This classification refers to campuses such as UERJ, where the complex university program is concentrated in a single building, in the case of the University in the João Lyra Filho Pavilion. In these cases, campus and building are confused in a single structure, making it impossible for us to dissociate from each other.

The project is one building and the floor of the Piazza del Duomo, in Milan, Italy. The piazza is an ideal case history of the development of an urban fabric, and of the consciousness of urbanism itself. / Master of Architecture

The Portals proposal, “the restructuring of an isolated site into an existing urban fabric.” This weaving of the site back into the urban environment is accomplished by extending the project beyond the limits or boundaries of the site to try to increase pedestrian activity through the site and allow new access to the waterfront. The project is a microcosm of the city in the sense that it provides a place to live, work, and play. Incorporating these elements into the program assures a rich variety of social relationships which is the key to the vigor and richness of life in the city. / Master of Architecture